These 19 Pencil Drawings Appear To Be 3-D, But Your Mind May Be Playing Tricks On You

“I love it when viewers have to look twice at my artwork.”

Ramon Bruin's pencil illustrations may appear to jump off the pages they're drawn on, and that's just the way he likes it.

"I love it when viewers have to look twice at my artwork and still not fully understand," the Dutch illustrator told A Plus. "Only then [have I done] my job right."

Although Bruin's drawings look 3-D, it takes more than a pencil and paper to create the illusion. What started as simply taking photos of his art to post online quickly became something magical.

"At one point I noticed the drawing didn't look the same when I had my camera slightly tilted," Bruin explained. "This was quite a revelation because after this discovery, I started adjusting the drawings to the titling of the camera."

Through trial and error, and the added use of shades in the drawings and lights when photographing them, Bruin managed to create stunning optical illusions, which blurred "the line between the drawing and reality."

As a rule of thumb, Bruin goes into each piece thinking outside of the box. So when he started to "draw underneath the paper" it didn't seem far-fetched to him even if he had no idea what would come next.

"I stacked a few sheets of paper on top of each other and started drawing underneath each one, so in the end, they would work altogether," he explained. "'Under Construction' is a nice example of this. It appears the whole object rises up, but in fact, it is as flat as a piece of paper."

After perfecting that technique arose a new challenge — creating the same effect from a frontal position.

"'Blue or Pink' was the first painting I created which has a feeling of depth from a frontal view," Bruin said. "In all the other artworks, the paper was lying flat on a surface. In this new step, I like to perfect the frontal view illusion."

"Sometimes I add a little bit of humor in the artwork to give the viewer a little smile," he told A Plus.

Bruin's work has been viewed around the world and has even received praise from some celebrities.

"A few days ago I did a 3-D floor painting for Chris Brown," he revealed. "His clothing line Black Pyramid was being launched in Amsterdam and I was asked to create an interactive piece of art. This artwork will travel along the launch of the clothes to London, Paris, Zurich, and a few other places."